It has emerged that Microsoft have shipped out beta versions of the development hardware for the Xbox 360 to developers. The versions being shipped out are said to be much more advanced than the Alpha systems used to demo games at the E3, which were based on Apple Powermac G5's.The beta kits are still not as powerful as the final version of the Xbox 360 will be, but are still far more powerful than the E3 systems, which it was claimed only represented 25-30 percent of the eventual power of the console:
The Beta kits - the PowerMac based systems were designated Alpha kits - have a processor and graphics chipset configuration much closer to the final hardware that will appear in Xbox 360.
Prior to E3, developers reported that a very small number of these more advanced kits had been manufactured, but it's only in recent weeks that they have begun shipping to Microsoft's development partners on a wide scale.
Microsoft ships Xbox 360 beta kits to developers
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